Ethics Law Isn’t Without Its Loopholes

WASHINGTON — The optimistically named Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 was supposed to prevent lobbyists from securing undue influence by taking members of Congress to intimate dinners at fancy restaurants.

But former Senator John B. Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana, said lobbyists had already come up with a way around the new law. They can make a political contribution to a member of Congress, and then have the member pay for the meal.

“If we call it a campaign contribution, that makes it legal,” Mr. Breaux said. “I can’t buy a $20 breakfast for a senator whom I’ve known for years, but I can give him a $1,000 campaign contribution.”

Starting Monday, Washington lobbyists must file detailed quarterly reports of their activities. In recent weeks, they have been hiring lawyers and going to seminars to decipher the law, passed in response to scandals involving the lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

But even as they try to figure out what the law requires, lobbyists are working to preserve the access and influence they have in Congress and at federal agencies.

Two top lobbyists, Tony and Heather Podesta, have brought in chefs from the famed California restaurant Chez Panisse to prepare fund-raising dinners at their home for two Democratic senators, Barbara Boxer of California and Tom Harkin of Iowa.

Lawmakers cannot accept free tickets from a lobbyist for a sports event. But the lobbyist can make a campaign contribution worth far more than the ticket.

The campaign committee for Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, is holding a fund-raiser with him at the new Washington Nationals baseball stadium just 15 blocks from the Capitol on April 24. The suggested contribution is $5,000 for political action committees and $1,500 for individuals.

Jan Witold Baran, a Republican expert on election law and government ethics, said, “One of the consequences of the draconian gift ban is to drive more and more social interaction between lobbyists and Congressional officials into campaign fund-raising, which is not subject to most of the gift rules.”

Complete Story - New York Times

Worker die from fall in NYC

It seem to have happened again this another construction worker has fallen to his death from an East Side building on Monday when a safety strap system intended to secure him to the building failed, the authorities stated. Intial report shows that the worker Kevin Kelly who is 25 years old fell from the 23^rd fall to the 14^th floor balcony as it reported by the New York Times, at the time before his death Kelly was said to be installing windows at a Skip to next paragraphcondominium tower which is under construction when he fell. This construction site has been cited by city inspectors for 25 code violations during the last year, city officials are saying, and also they are saying that Kelly’s safety strap had a failure if we going to give someone a job as dangerous as this why aren’t the gears given to these workers are made sure that they are properly and adequately safe for these construction workers. It also said that their will be an investigation of the methods the “crews used to install safety strap. I know for a fact by watching the News that there has been a lot of fatal accident on constructions sites because proper safety codes aren’t being followed or implemented, an article I read stated that ten people have been killed in high-rise construction accidents since January, and Jeff just posted an article on the seven who died on March 8 when a 200-foot crane collapsed at another East Side condominium project, demolishing a four-story town house on East 50th Street. All these deaths have sparks criticism of city safety rules and enforcement. To me it seems that the department of building isn’t taking these deaths seriously because no change has been done really. I feel that the project manager and Alexico Group which is a development company isn’t doing enough to protect their workers, Alexico Group have received citations for 38 building code violations which it being stated been issued to them since July 2005. Also is being said by department officials that 25 of the citations were issued since work on the building began in April 2007 and that the others were issued during demolition and other work to prepare for the construction. When does it stop these carelessness and negligence? There is no respect for person here I think Kant theory would apply to this case here.

http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/articles_n16/idn2008.04.15.01.21.24.html

Pirate Bay to Sue Music Industry

The Pirate Bay is threatening to seek damages from music industry lobby group The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for blocking access to its website.

In February the IFPI went to court to get Danish ISP Tele2 to block access to the website accusing it of aiding and abetting copyright infringement.

A blog post from one of Pirate Bay's administrators, Brokep, suggests the organisation will seek damages for the blocking should Tele2 win the ongoing court case. Tele2 is appealing the court's verdict, but the DNS block remains in place until the case is resolved.

The block had limited effect - the blog post quotes alexa.com figures showing Pirate Bay rose from 29th most popular site in Denmark to 24th as a result of the publicity around the court case.

Brokep said the money raised would be used to set up a fund to help aspiring Danish artists.
The amount demanded is not revealed but Brokep writes: "We will demand an amount of cash that we feel will be reasonable (Not counting like Ifpi themselves, we actually understand economy a bit more [sic])."

On 1 April the IFPI demanded $2.5m from Pirate Bay in damages for compensation for downloads of 24 albums, nine films and four games.

The Pirate Bay has previously promised to demand compensation from the Swedish government after police seized its servers.

Source - The Register (UK)

Four killed as crane crushes NYC building

I would imagine that most of us in this class has heard and read several articles pertaining to the recent crane collapse that devastated a neighborhood on the East side of Manhattan. The skyscraper was planned to be a 43 storey condominium and 19 floors were completed. The crane was attached alongside the skyscraper and toppled over crashing into other residential buildings in the area of construction. There was a total of 4 deaths and they were believed to be the construction workers. Another 13 people were injured in what is called one of New York Cities worst construction accident in recent history.

The Crane split into pieces as if fell demolishing a townhouse and 3 other buildings. What seems to be the problem that caused the accident was that a piece of steel fell off and sheared a girder holding the crane to the building. Residents from the neighborhood complained about the construction site on several occasions. They cited the fact that workers were working illegal hours and said the building seemed to be going up very fast.
I also learned that prior to the collapse 13 violations were issued to the particular site in the past 27 months. There have been many things said about this destruction. With the tenants complaints and the violations at the sight should have brought inspectors should have been more adament by taking a closer look at these serious complaints. But someone obviously did not do their job effectively putting many precious lives at risk. New York City constructs high rise buildings all the time, so this is not something that is foreign to them and in this case red flags were certainly thrown to officials putting them in the position to make sure safety regulations and any building codes were enforced.

I've read several articles about this crane crash as well as seeing television reports on the news. Clearly who ever was in charge of the construction site knows that someone was not doing their job effectively. I see this as blame responsibility, because egineers are known for being responsible. But this was not the case in this collapse. Stricter codes must be enforced for the safety of all persons involved, including the construction workers and the residents of the neighborhood. If these inspectors are not doing their job, then perhaps someone needs to be checking on them to ensure the safety of the workers and community.

[This article can be found in our NJIT database]
http://www.lexisnexis.com.libdb.njit.edu:8888/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?risb=21_T3573061946&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T3573061955&cisb=22_T3573061954&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=244777&docNo=23

Tesla Motors Files Suit Against Competitor Over Design Ideas.

SAN FRANCISCO — Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley maker of electric sports cars, filed suit in San Mateo Superior Court on Monday against a competing company and two of its employees, saying they stole some of Tesla’s design ideas and trade secrets.

Tesla, which has generated much interest among fans of cars and technology, recently started shipping a two-seat electric sports car in limited quantities. Last year it hired Henrik Fisker, a Danish-born designer who is known for his work on high-end exotic sports cars, to do the body design for a four-seat sedan, code-named White Star.

The Tesla lawsuit contends that Mr. Fisker and his chief operating officer, Bernhard Koehler, doing business under the name Fisker Coachbuild, fraudulently agreed to take on Tesla’s $875,000 design contract to gain access to confidential design information and trade secrets, then announced a competing vehicle. Last fall Mr. Fisker founded Fisker Automotive, which is backed by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

The quarrel sheds a light on the insular world of the Valley’s investors in environmentally friendly technologies. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, whose Google search engine was originally backed by Kleiner Perkins, were both early Tesla investors.

Both the planned Tesla sedan and Mr. Fisker’s recently announced Karma are meant to be hybrid cars using a small gas engine to power a generator that charges a battery, which in turn powers an electric motor. The design, known as a serial hybrid, is thought to greatly extend the range and efficiency of hybrid vehicles.

The Tesla lawsuit states that before doing the design work for Tesla, Mr. Fisker had no experience with hybrid technology. It says that he did substandard work for Tesla, essentially sabotaging it, and then used the revenue from the design contract to develop his company’s car.
“I think it’s ironic that Fisker chose to name his car the Karma, when what he’s done is very bad karma,” said Adam C. Belsky, a lawyer at Gross, Belsky & Alonso who represents Tesla.

Calls to Fisker Automotive were not returned. A person answering the phone at Finck & Dadras, the San Francisco law firm representing Fisker Coachbuild, said it was the firm’s policy not to comment on litigation.

Tesla executives said they decided not to use Mr. Fisker’s design and were starting over on the design for White Star when they discovered that Mr. Fisker was going into competition with them. The design switch caused a three- to six-month delay in production of the car, which is now scheduled to go on sale in 2010, the company said. Tesla is building a factory in New Mexico to manufacture the sedan.

“It caused a slight delay in White Star because we could not use the Fisker styling,” said Elon Musk, chairman of Tesla. “The styling was substandard compared to what he unveiled for his product. He gave us an inferior work product, and it’s obvious why.”

Tesla has scrambled to come up with a new design with some help from Lotus, the maker of the bodies for the initial Tesla Roadster. Mr. Musk said that he was leading the effort.
“‘I’m not really a car designer,” said Mr. Musk, who was one of the founders of PayPal and started SpaceX, a developer of spacecraft. “We’ll see what people think of cars designed by me versus Fisker; it’s the amateur versus the professional.”

The Tesla lawsuit seeks to stop Mr. Fisker from using Tesla design documents, along with a return of the money from the contract and unspecified punitive damages.
Having previously designed cars for BMW and Aston Martin, more recently Mr. Fisker has modified BMW and Mercedes-Benz luxury cars to create even more expensive custom cars that cost as much as $234,000. Tesla’s White Star is expected to cost between $65,000 and $70,000. The Fisker Karma, which is also planned for delivery in 2010, is expected to cost about $80,000.

Source - New York Times

Bush Reverses Course on Contract Fraud Loophole

WASHINGTON — A multibillion-dollar loophole that would have helped conceal abuse of overseas contracts has been eliminated from a Bush administration proposal to protect taxpayer dollars, according to documents obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

Reversing itself after months of criticism, the administration closed the loophole that was quietly slipped last year into a proposed Justice Department crackdown on government contract fraud.
The loophole specifically exempted contractors from reporting evidence of fraud or abuse in overseas work that cost taxpayers at least $5 million. An updated version of the proposal, drafted April 4, requires reporting on all contracts — whether at home or abroad.

The government has spent more than $102 billion since 2003 on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan alone.

"This change would result in making the clause requirements for a contractor code of business ethics and conduct, business ethics awareness and compliance program, and internal control system applicable to contracts performed outside the United States," the new draft rule states.

Government policywriters said the original rule was drawn up quickly, and chided the Justice Department for not explicitly making sure that overseas contracts should be included in the crackdown. "It was only after publication of the proposed rule … that DoJ and other respondents expressed concern about the overseas exemption," the draft states.

Source - Rutland Herald

Emergency Alter System

On April 09, 2008 the FCC approved a new nationwide emergency alter system. This system will send a text message to individuals, whose carrier participates in the system, altering them of an emergency. The system will inform user on 3 types of alters: “disasters that could jeopardize the health and safety of Americans, such as terrorist attacks; imminent or ongoing threats such tornadoes, hurricanes, or earthquakes; and child abduction or Amber alerts.”

Cellular carriers do not have to sign up for the alter system, it is totally by choice. But the system will go in affect once an agency has been assigned. The agency will be responsible for creating a message which will be sent to the carries central computer and then the carrier will be responsible for sending the emergency message to its users.

Once this plan goes in affect cellular have a choice if they want to receive the message. Users can choose to receive the message or not to receive the message. All cellular carriers have said that they are going to opt into the program.

This is a great effort by the FCC to keep Americans informed about emergency events going on around the US. The system can help catch criminals and word can travel a lot faster. Mostly everyone in the US has cell phones, which are a reach away, but not everyone watches the TV or listens to the radio. I know I will definitely sign up to receive important alters if it was offered.

Source:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/09/fcc.cell.phone.alert/index.html

Who Owns Intellectual Property?

Two Chinese students, entrepreneurs designing a start-up involving software and products linked to an Internet website to be developed and distributed in China, had to come up with a realistic business plan projection a couple of years ago. It required an estimation of the share of potential revenues that would be siphoned off by others appropriating the students' ideas. They decided that 60 percent would be a realistic loss rate—a stark reminder of the perils of owning intellectual property in China at that time.

Turning to the Internet itself, and particularly to content-sharing sites, the matter of ownership is challenged in a different way. Content produced by news media as well as individuals acting as professionals or amateurs is being copied, spliced, and represented essentially as something so new and unique that it is often downloaded by hundreds of thousands of viewers who might not have watched the original material. Who owns the result? Does anyone owe others for the use of the content? If so, how much and for what share? Or has the culture of "free" become so deeply imbedded in the minds of a new generation of users that content developers can only hope for partial, occasional, or eventual financial rewards for their efforts?

This brings to mind some aspects of the way that the Internet facilitates cooperation in the generation of intellectual capital ranging from new product development to research. It helps explain why the Gen Xers we discussed several months ago find it quite natural to work in teams, either in face-to-face contact or online. In some cases, it is producing remarkable results. But whose work is it? Who owns the result?

Continued - Source

Southwest And FAA

In the last few days, one can read a lot about Southwest airlines and their lack of customer safety. IN March it was discovered that Southwest violated FAA regulations regarding airline inspections on 46 Boeing 737s. The violations occurred in 2007. Due to this violation FAA fined Southwest $10.2 million, which is the largest fine ever imposed on an airline. Some of these inspections were serious. After the discovery of the violation, the air planes were inspected and many were grounded for some serious failures. How can Southwest be so unethical towards the safety of there passengers? According to CNN Southwest flew more passengers in 2007 then any airline. That makes them the number airline in the US and they have no lack of respect for their passengers. Luckily no accidents occurred and upon inspections of the planes, the planes were grounded.

What makes this case even worse is that the FAA was aware of this and Southwest tried to remove the FAA inspectors from inspecting the airlines. So I wonder how much the government agents got paid for keeping their mouth shut. All this came forward to the public when the same inspector, who was removed from the group, blew the whistle on FAA and Southwest.

As of now there is going to be a congressional hearing on the lack of safety on Southwest and FAA’s part. I believe the individuals at FAA, who let Southwest fly their planes without inspection, should also be fined and serve time in jail. The fine that was imposed on Southwest is not enough, because one cannot put a price on human life. Southwest should be grounded indefinitely.

Source:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/02/southwest.faa.inspection/index.html?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/southwest_faa_dc

Engineering society accused of cover-ups in investigations of Katrina, World Trade Center

Engineers who build our roads, bridges and dams have been accused of covering up catastrophic design flaws in recent national disasters. The American society of Civil Engineers were paid by the federal government to investigate disasters after the attack on the World Trade Center and the levee failures caused by hurrican Katrina in 2005. This professional organization of engineers have been accused of covering up engineering mistakes. After these allegations an independent panel was formed to investigate the matter. Sherewood Boelhert, who is a retired congressman from New York heads the panel.

Plenty of assumptions have been made about the World Trade Center and in the case of hurricane Katrina, these professional engineers suggested that the power of the storm itself was a major problem as well as the poorly designed levees in New Orleans, LA. Raymond Seed a levee expert was the first to question the engineering socieities involvement and accused them and the Army Corps of collusion. Astaneh-Asl, a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley questioned the make up of the Engineers Societies investigation team and called it "moral corruption". What seems to be in question is how the professional engineers dealt with these disasters and why they're being investigated from the information obtained make them look very suspicious to say the least. As I recall from the news reports after these disasters is the fact that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) needed to investigate those disasters thorougly and that they were not doing enough to help the people who were devestaed by these disasters. I fail to understand how and why the government is allowed to let these engineering design flaws be swept under the table and nothing is really done to slove the problem at hand. I find it difficult myself to point a finger, for the simple fact that they're all covering up something. Although the good things is that these parties involved are all being investigated to date, especially to benefit the people who suffered in Katrina and the families of the World Trade Center victims. I think that the United States government and the Professional Engineers have much more to answer to in the days to come. Below is the link to this article, it is very interesting.

Newsday (New York)
March 26, 2008 Wednesday ALL EDITIONS
http://www.lexisnexis.com.libdb.njit.edu:8888/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?risb=21_T3420708043&format=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T3420708046&cisb=22_T3420708045&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=306890&docNo=1